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Updated: June 17, 2025
In June, 1297, Philip the Handsome, in person, laid siege to Lille, and, on the 13th of August, Robert, Count of Artois, at the head of the French chivalry, gained at Furnes, over the Flemish army, a victory which decided the campaign. Lille capitulated.
Different people asked me to things, but I wasn't up to going out, and the weather was amazingly bad. I was to have gone back to work on the Thursday week after I arrived home, but I got a telegram from Madame Sindici saying Furnes was being shelled, and the hospital, etc., was to be evacuated. Dr. Perrin, who was to have taken me back, had to start immediately without me.
Just before leaving Flanders, I called on the sisters in the convent school of Furnes. They were still cheery and busy in their care of sick and wounded civilians. Every few days the Germans shell the town from seven miles away, but the sisters will continue there through the coming months as through the last year.
By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk! After many vicissitudes I met Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept at the club. I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my boots brushed and hot water at my door. It was so like home again.
Then we saw the gleam of headlights, and an English voice called out. Our two friends had come back. They had gone to the entry of Dixmude, but could get no further owing to the flames and shells. They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de Broqueville. It seemed certain that he was dead, and very sorrowfully, as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.
So I shall always think of Furnes as a wet, dark place, and of myself with a lantern trudging about its mean streets. I have not written my diary for some weeks. I went home to England and stayed at Rayleigh House. On my way home I met Mr. F. Ware, who told me submarines were about. As I had but just left a much-shelled town, I think he might have held his peace.
"Philip the Handsome precipitately levied an army of sixty thousand men, says Villani, and gave the command of it to Count Robert of Artois, the hero of Furnes. The forces of the Flemings amounted to no more than twenty thousand fighting men. The two armies met near Courtrai.
The news that reaches us is meagre, but I prefer that to the false reports that are circulated at home. This afternoon we came out in motors and ambulances to establish ourselves at Furnes in an empty Ecclesiastical College. Nothing was ready, and everything was in confusion.
Bonaparte visited Etaples, Ambleteuse, Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Furnes, Niewport, Ostend, and the Isle of Walcheren. He collected at the different ports all the necessary information with that intelligence and tact for which he was so eminently distinguished. He questioned the sailors, smugglers, and fishermen, and listened attentively to the answers he received.
Through a dormer window we looked out across the flat country beyond Furnes and saw, a few miles away, the lines of battle. Some village was burning there, a steady torch under a heavy cloud of smoke made rosy and beautiful as a great flower over the scarlet flames. Shells were bursting with bouquets of light and then scattered stars into the sky.
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